


Bonds Beyond Blood

by Anonymouspotato



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bloodmarks, Feels, Fluff, Gen, Mostly Just Nonsense, Some angst, this is the weirdest thing i’ve ever come up with
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 02:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21520297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymouspotato/pseuds/Anonymouspotato
Summary: The Mighty Nein have a complicated relationship with ‘family’. Especially when ‘family’ is branded on your skin.A weird AU inspired by a weird dream I had. I hope you enjoy!
Relationships: The Mighty Nein & The Mighty Nein
Comments: 3
Kudos: 82





	Bonds Beyond Blood

**Jester** spends at least a few minutes every day staring at her Bloodmarks.

On the back of her left hand is a beautiful, clear-cut ruby, as beautiful and red and spectacular as her mama. The mark almost blends in to her crimson skin, but on Jester’s light blue it burns like a lamp in the middle of the night. 

It’s the same with her father’s mark, too-a slate gray slash like an upside-down Y. Every night, as she ducks through the shadows and corners of the chateau, she checks the space over the client’s hearts, searching for that same glyph. And every night, for twenty years, she turns up empty. 

When she first meets the Gentleman, staring him down, she doesn’t think to check. And that night, as they reel from the Caedogeist’s assault, as they sit side-by-side sipping wine, he pulls down his collar. “Any man can have a child, Jester. But I am certainly not your father.”

The Bloodmark on his chest says otherwise.

As she walks back up to their room, she unbuttons the top few rows of her dress and pushed the fabric aside. Etched over her heart is a deep blue teardrop with a lollipop shape cut out in the middle. She’s not going to be a parent like her dad-but she’s not going to be quite like her mama, either. Whatever child might bear that mark someday, she hopes she can make them proud of her.

**Caduceus** has always had a fascination with Bloodmarks. His own are as familiar as breathing-a pale green wreath of leaves on his left hand, the deep orange-brown outline of a four pointed star on his right. The same as all his siblings, stained forever on his parent’s chests. His own Bloodmark, a cherry pink series of curlicued lines that remind him of a summer breeze, is equally ever present. No, it’s the  _ visitors _ who provide most of his joy.

Even when he’s only a few seasons old, he rubbernecks at the hands and chests of the mourners who visit the Blooming Grove, committing every symbol to memory, weaving them in flowers and etching then in trees. The graveyard is full of little sigils and signs, if you know where to look.

After he meets the Nein, comforts them and moves on from the Grove, he still leaves the tokens in different places. Avantika’s scarlet arrowhead is etched into the mast of the Mistake. The Ball Eater’s wheel gets Twiggy’s plum purple lighting strike and Orly’s elegant black beetle. Essek Theylass’s silvery-blue twin slashes and Leylas Kryn’s light grey crown decorate the walls of the fun room the Xhorhaus. He wonders sometimes if consecution affects one’s Bloodmark, but he’s never bothered to ask.

He has never considered the idea that his unique mark will end up on a child’s right hand. He prefers to watch what the gods choose to show other’s souls. It’s always so much of an insight.

**Nott** sometimes still thinks about the marks nestled on her hand, back when she was Veth. Her mother had given her five forest green dots in an X pattern, her father a bright yellow Maple leaf. The marks were simple, but she had liked them, liked the way their colors fit together nicely, like a sunset over forests. But she had never thought her own would appear on another.

But when she looks down at her newborn son, and sees the sunset orange hands clasped on the back of his left hand, something swells in her chest she didn’t know she could feel. Nestled across from Yeza’s three acid green bubbles, they make an interesting contrast as he pumps his tiny fist in the air. But they fit Luc, and she lets him press his hand to her chest to see the contrast.

When she stops being Veth, the marks on her hand disappear. Instead, there is a triangle of black Xs on the back of her left hand, and nothing on her right. Nott has no parents, no history, no  _ nothing. _ Just an evil woman who brought her back as something wrong. It takes many years, and many hardships, before she sees her reflection. There are still a pair of clasped hands over her heart. Darker orange, a little brown, but still there.

And Nott dares to think, for a moment, that there’s more of Veth than she thought left inside her after all.

**Fjord** has never stopped looking for marks. His left hand bears a rough sky blue symbol that a man tells him is the archaic Orcish letter for the ‘duh’ sound. He looks at every woman he sees-Orc or otherwise-but it never appears on her chest. The practical, provocative, low-cut style of Port Damali makes it easier than it might be otherwise, but he still never finds it. The same is true for his father’s mark-a deep, red-purple outline of a tooth. He watches the docks every time he gets the chance to sneak away from the orphanage, the sailors stripping off their shirts in the humidity, but the Bloodmark evades him. He lives his childhood convinced his parents are just out of sight, hiding in the tavern three streets away, waiting for the right time to get him.

The right time never comes.

Vandren does not have a tooth on his chest. He has a ring the color of the ocean at night. But Vandren is the closest thing he has had to a father his whole life, Bloodmarks be damned. Losing him, the day of the explosion, hurts like losing a limb.

His own Bloodmark is a double-ended yellow-green spiral that is nearly indistinguishable from his two-toned skin. It is his, and his alone, even after a malevolent god has its way with his mind and twists him around into something new. He doesn’t think he’ll ever have a child, but if he does, he will finally have a mark to share.

**Yasha** is her Bloodmark before she is Orphanmaker, even before she is Yasha.

In her tribe, you have three names. The name you keep, the name you give, and the name you are given.

The name she gives is ‘Purple Crystal’, because that is the mark on her chest. There is negative space to make it look like a cut diamond, but the small gem is pristine. She is Purple Crystal, and then she is Orphanmaker. Yasha is private, and unseen.

Until Zuala.

Zuala is Red Arrow. Zuala is Eyepiercer. Zuala is warm skies and soft lips and the wind burning in her lungs and the small blue flowers that glow in the dark and bloom every few springs. Zuala is so many things that even three names are not sufficient. And then she is gone.

Yasha is not destined for Zuala. Zuala is not destined for Yasha. Never will there be a child with a lavender crystal on one hand and a burgundy arrow on the other.

(Jester teaches her those words. ‘Burgundy’. ‘Lavender’. She likes the way they roll on her tongue, likes the way they fill Zuala in more.)

Burgundy (not Red, Red is too little for her) Arrow is gone. Ripped up and pulled apart. Wilted like the flowers when autumn comes.

Eyepiercer is gone. Taken and pulled by a cruel twist of fate.

Yasha is gone, too, for two years. And when she wakes, Orphanmaker is gone, now. She carves an arrow, pointing up into the sky, next the the crystal. And when it begins to heal, she carves it again. And again. And again. Until the scar is the color of Zuala’s.

Burgundy Arrow is gone. Eyepiercer is dead. But Zuala is alive, in Yasha’s bones and blood.

**Beauregard** is an anomaly. That much is apparent from the moment of her birth. For generations, every Lionette has had the same blood mark. The same orange-red bundle of grapes on every chest. The very mark that sits on Beau’s right hand.

Beau’s Bloodmark is not a bunch of off-color berries. It is a black mountain lion head in profile, small drops of viscera dripping from its giant incisors. It is a fierce, brutal mark for a girl who must be the opposite. Pretty and docile and smooth. 

It makes her want to scream.

She stares at her right hand, with its fucking mutated fruit. Her left hand has a baby blue heart that mocks her every time she looks at it. When she is ten, she starts asking her mother for makeup creams for her face. For a second, her mother seems like the might be proud-like she  _ might _ think of her daughter as anything other than a mistake. That fantasy comes crashing down the very next day, when she doesn’t see the marks on her daughter’s hands.

At the Cobalt Soul, everyone’s hands are covered in bandages, and thank the Knowing Mistress for it, because that means no one can question her strange insistence on hiding her marks.

And when she strikes out with her fist, sometimes she sees the flash of the Lionette’s brand, stark on her skin. Those hits always seem to pack a little extra  _ oomph. _

**Caleb** does not deserve his Bloodmarks. He hasn’t for sixteen years.

He was so proud of them, when he was young and bright and stupid. His mother’s midnight blue star twinkled and shimmered in the moonlight. His father’s sunny yellow rows of bricks contrasted in the soothing, pleasant way that made them both seem brighter somehow. The blue-white flame on his chest was the pretty silver blue of thin spun clouds. And when he first moved arcane magic through his blood, they had all flared, for just a moment.

When that man, the one in Rexxentrum, who had left a deeper mark on him than Mutter or Vader, had his claws in Bren’s skin, the marks were never seen. They were identification, they were a tracer, they were a weak point. So the three of them always wore gloves, even when there was no one around to watch, out of fear that that man was watching anyway. 

Bloodmarks cannot be destroyed. That is the first rule of everything to do with them. But he had found a way.

When that fateful Fire Bolt streaked through the dead night air, when the flames licked up the side of the house, when the screaming filled the air, Bren broke. He left behind an empty shell with no real bloodline in it. Not all the way dead, but not really alive. Listless and placid. Eleven blank years.

When the clouds faded, and the boy-the man-who would be Caleb Widogast emerged, there was an unfamiliar ache in his hands.

He always covers the scars on his arms, but sometimes he’ll stare at the burns on his hands where his parents should be. Just as a reminder.

**Author's Note:**

> In case it wasn’t clear, this AU (which I’m calling the Bloodmarks AU) is sort of like a backwards Soulmate AU. The idea is everyone is born with three marks on their body-a unique one over their heart, their biological mother’s on the back of their left hand, and their biological father’s on the back of their right hand.


End file.
